Unless you’ve been living an isolated existence these past 50 years or so, the chances are you’re familiar with the work of Sir Tim Rice, one of the finest and most prolific lyricists this country – and indeed the world – has ever witnessed.
From his work on many of the world’s great musicals – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita and Chess, to name but four – to his unforgettable contributions to wildly successful Disney productions like The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, it’s safe to say that Sir Tim has played a huge part in providing the soundtrack to many of our lives.
Now the Oscar-winning Knight of the Realm (he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to music in 1994) is bringing his live musical theatre touring show, My Life in Musicals – I Know Him So Well, to the Cambridge Arts Theatre at the end of this month.
Ahead of the start of the tour, Sir Tim told the Cambridge Independent that he was looking forward to it, adding: “I’ve done it before but this is the first time I’ve done such an extended list of places.”
The show will involve the affable lyricist and author reflecting on his illustrious career at the heart of musical theatre – as well as film and TV – sharing anecdotes behind the songs, the hits and the misses, along with other stories from his life.
Musical accompaniment will be provided by leading West End singers and musicians, led by musical director Duncan Waugh.
“I think there’ll be some quite funny revelations and comments,” says Sir Tim, who was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008.
“It’s really a chance for people who are interested in musicals and songs from musicals – or my musicals, in fact.
“I just talk about how certain songs were created, the funny things that happened… I talk about the great composers I’ve worked with – Andrew [Lloyd Webber] and Elton [John] and [Disney composer] Alan Menken, and [ABBA members and songwriters] Björn and Benny…
“And a very good band and singers perform the songs to stop me talking too much. It’s a slightly behind-the-scenes look at the shows.
“It’s a very good way of seeing about 10 shows without having to sit through the whole thing, because you get all the hits from the shows – I hope!
“I think people will know about 15 at least… there’s probably somewhere between about 15 and 20 songs and I think there’ll only be two or three they might not know.
“It’s fun to put in one or two slightly lesser-known ones, but really people have come to see the songs that they know, they come to see the hits – and you’ve got to give them what they want.”
Sir Tim notes that he “ad libs” bits during the evening, reveals that he does a bit of singing himself (“I’m afraid I do, but only a little bit – I don’t want to put the punters off”), and says that “no two shows are exactly the same”.
“The songs are exactly the same,” he states, “but I talk about various aspects of my career, how I met people like Andrew, or how I got to persuade Elton to do The Lion King, and working with Alan Menken on Disney movies, and working with Björn and Benny, and how I went out to Argentina to research Evita, all these sort of things.
“There’s not too much of me talking, probably about a couple of minutes between each of the songs – usually I get a few laughs.
“I genuinely think if you like musicals... I mean if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be going to the show, but if you like some of the stuff I’ve done, then I think you’ll enjoy the show enormously.”
Away from musical theatre, Sir Tim has also ventured into the world of James Bond, penning the words to All Time High, the theme song for the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, sung by Rita Coolidge and written with legendary Bond composer John Barry.
Does he touch on his experience with Bond at all during the show?
“Yes, we do my James Bond song,” he replies, “and we do one or two pop songs that I’ve written; we do the song that I wrote with Andrew for Elvis [It’s Easy for You] and one or two other odds and sods, but yes, absolutely.
“I also illustrate one or two songs that started out in a totally different format, with different lyrics, and how they didn’t work with certain lyrics but then when we got the words right, the song worked.
“It’s a little bit about the construction of songs and how songs get created, but it’s mainly about musical songs and the key for any musical is the story.
“You’ve got to get a good story, and if you’ve got a good story then that’s the foundation on which you build absolutely everything.”
Commenting on the pressure at just how big these things can get, another Bond composer David Arnold previously told the Cambridge Independent that scoring the world’s most famous film franchise was “insane”, adding that “it’s best not thought about”.
Has Sir Tim ever felt like that when working on some of the massive, globe-straddling projects to which he has been attached?
“I don’t think I have…” he reflects. “When we started out we didn’t really know what we were doing, and I think we were just getting up in the morning and carrying on trying to write something.
“And I think when you begin, you don’t – I didn’t anyway – even think you’re going to be successful, but you plough on and just do what you think is the right thing to do.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been overwhelmed by one particular property; I mean there have been one or two things that have gone badly, so that’s definitely harder to cope with.
“And of course you can never quite understand why a musical doesn’t work...
“You go back about five years later and say ‘Well of course we got that wrong’, but at the time when you’re working on something, whatever it is you’re doing what you think is the right thing – and you never know it’s the wrong thing until something goes badly wrong!”
When it comes to putting his words to music, the way it’s done, Sir Tim notes, “depends largely on who you’re working with”.
“Elton John famously likes the words first, and other composers such as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Alan Menken like the music first,” he explains.
“But in all cases you’ve got to have the story, you’ve got to know what each song is going to be about, whether it’s words or music first – it’s getting the tale you’re trying to tell.
“And the tale you’re trying to tell is something that’s got to make sense and it’s got to fit in with the rest of the songs.
“It’s not just like writing a one-off pop hit, or pop flop… I’ve got nothing against that at all; I mean to write a three-minute, huge number one smash is very difficult indeed and very few people can do it, although millions of people are trying.
“But with a show you’ve got to be quite confident that you’re on the right road, you’ve got to have a great team, because hit or flop you’re going to spend at least a year working on it before you even know whether it’s worth continuing.”
Asked if he has a particular way of writing, Sir Tim replies: “I think one always finds an excuse to not start – you sharpen all your pencils or you put your records and files in alphabetical order, or do anything to avoid actually starting…
“But yes, if I am actually trying to write a lyric, or work out the structure of a show, I’ve got to be on my own in a fairly quiet room.
“Obviously if I’m working on lyrics, I’ll need to have some method of playing the tune over and over again – but even there, pretty soon you get to know the tune until you don’t really need to listen to it again, it’s in your head.
“But of course at the end, when you think you’ve written it, you then put on the tape, or download the tune you’ve got, and sing along with it and see if it fits, which is quite exciting if it does.”
Sir Tim says he was “always intrigued by rhyme and humour” and adds: “I’ve always tried to write a funny lyric.
“I mean Joseph was great because a lot of it’s quite funny, and that makes the serious moments stronger because they’re a good contrast, I think.”
He recalls that in his younger days, his favourite lyricists mainly came from the world of ’50s rock ‘n’ roll – “like Chuck Berry or Eddie Cochran, Jerry Leiber, who wrote quite a lot of stuff for Elvis Presley”.
He continues: “I found once The Beatles and Stones, who were my exact contemporaries, got going, and I didn’t really realise it at the time, but the songs of theirs I liked best were usually the ones that had a great lyric.
“If a song had a weak lyric, however good the tune, for me it often slightly took away from the magic of the song. But in the case of The Beatles and the Stones, for example, their lyrics were nearly always superb.
“A great song like Strawberry Fields Forever took me a long time to get into, but once I really got into, I thought ‘This is an absolutely brilliant piece of writing’ and it’s because of the words as much as the weird, original melody that made it so exciting.
“But in musical theatre, in my early days, I used to like Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote My Fair Lady, I thought the lyrics of Stephen Sondheim in West Side Story were brilliant.
“I liked Oscar Hammerstein, all the rather obvious ones… Lionel Bart wrote great lyrics and music – perhaps the great all-round English musical theatre writer…
“I was always attracted to the words; I found sometimes that I could be totally put off a pop song if I didn’t like the words.”
With a repertoire that includes such timeless, universally-adored standards as Don’t Cry for Me Argentina (from Evita), Any Dream Will Do (from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), I Know Him So Well (from Chess) and Superstar (from Jesus Christ Superstar), it is certainly difficult to pick a favourite Tim Rice song and soundtrack – though if push came to shove, personally I would opt for The Lion King, which includes unforgettable, era-defining numbers like Circle of Life, Can You Feel the Love Tonight and Hakuna Matata.
Inevitably, Sir Tim, who admits that he “never thought he would make a career” out of writing songs, notes that for him picking a favourite tune of his would be like choosing between his children.
“It’s difficult,” he observes, “I think, being a bit arrogant, some of them are good in some respects and some of them are good in other respects.
“It’s when everything comes together and works well. I’ve always got a soft spot for Evita, and Chess – Lion King is great because with Lion King I was working in a different medium.
“I was working for something that was initially a cartoon, a movie, and there were several different rules one had to obey.
“Your songs had to be of a length to fit a certain scene, there were various other aspects of working in that particular medium which taught me new things…
“I enjoyed working on The Lion King because I was doing what I always did, trying to write words, but I was doing it in a different medium with different people.
“Also, in the case of The Lion King, I was doing it with Elton John who always liked the words first, which was different for me.
“Everything I’ve done obviously has been about writing words for songs, and there are different ways of approaching that, depending on the subject matter, depending on whether it’s a film or a show or a concert or whatever.
“But in essence, it all comes down to the same thing: can you make the tune sound good, or rather can you not ruin the tune by adding the wrong words to it? And can you make an impact, can you get a message over, can you be funny?
“That’s more important than whether it’s for a movie or for a show – it all comes back down to the song.”
Sir Tim’s most recent stage musical is From Here to Eternity, on which he collaborated with composer Stuart Brayson, and he has “one or two ideas in the fire” for future productions.
“But it’s amazing how much time the old shows take up,” he notes, “there’s always somewhere to go, something to talk about.
“There’s a possibility, for example, of Joseph being filmed again, a proper feature film, and they’re going to want two new songs.
“There’s so many things to do with all the old shows; there are nine or 10 shows out there which are being done quite a lot and it’s like trying to keep 10 companies on the road, 10 businesses on the road – there’s always something that needs a bit of tinkering!”
Hear the stories behind some of the most popular songs ever written when Sir Tim Rice brings his My Life in Musicals – I Know Him So Well tour to the Cambridge Arts Theatre this Sunday (28 April).
Tickets, priced £42, are available from cambridgeartstheatre.com. For more on Sir Tim, go to timrice.co.uk.
